Toul Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh
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| | The Toul Sleng Genocide Museum speaks of Cambodia’s horridly painful past. Stark exhibits include metal bunks in narrow cells plastered with black and white photos of every prisoner – men, women and children- who were captured. The buildings remain as found, with windows barred with iron and barbed wire, and electric barbed wire around the perimeter. | |
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| Unspeakable Horrors Formerly Tuol Svey High School, the Khmer Rouge turned the classrooms into a center of detention, torture and death between 1975-1979. Its name was shortened to Security Prison 21 or just S-21, its abbreviated name giving no hint of the unspeakable horrors which took place. Some 20,000 Cambodians were detained and tortured here and taken to the killing fields of Boeung Choeung Ek. Only seven prisoners walked out alive when the Vietnamese rolled in– they survived because they were artists, photographers or sculptors who could turn out countless busts of Pol Pot. Some foreigners, picked up at sea by the Khmer Rouge patrol boats, died here and their documents are displayed. | | | Killing Reached Feverish Pitch The Khmer Rouge guards started turning on themselves and guards and executioners were killed by those who succeeded them. At the worst of times in 1977, the cadres were killing up to 100 prisoners a day. | | | Discovery of S-21 S-21 was discovered by a Vietnamese photographer in 1980 who, with his colleagues, followed the stench of the decomposing corpses to the graves in the nearby courtyard. These were of 14 prisoners who were tortured to death just as the Vietnamese were arriving. His photos are on exhibited here. The Vietnamese, who set up the museum, kept the cells in their original condition. Cells display instruments of torture, leg-irons and paintings by Cambodian artist and former inmate Vann Nath depicting grisly scenes of atrocities in this Toul Sleng Genocide Museum. | |
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Last Updated on Monday, 14 September 2009 23:04 |
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